


my body is a cage

by nahchilles



Category: Euphoria (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen, i guess this is a character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 13:50:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21209585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahchilles/pseuds/nahchilles
Summary: Cassie used to be a skater.





	my body is a cage

Cassie used to be a skater. She may not have been all that great at it, and that dream fizzled out pretty early on, but being on ice was amazing. It was complete _ freedom _— freedom to move, freedom to go wherever she wanted. Even when her muscles ached and her joints were killing her, there was an effortless quality to the way she moved across the ice. Even falling felt like flying. Honestly, nothing since has come close to that feeling. 

Cassie misses skating a little. But she doesn’t think it would be the same anyway, not anymore. 

Maybe it started with the videos. She knows what the guys she goes to school with call her while they pass around her nudes like a fucking joint, and, sure, it was super hard to come to terms with for a little while, but it’s nothing at this point, it’s _ fine. _ Mostly. Honestly, Cassie doesn’t think she’s _ that _ much of a slut. She’s gone from boyfriend to boyfriend over the years, and a lot of them might have encouraged (read: coerced) her into making some questionable decisions, but what can she say? She likes to make people happy, and, well. A couple of leaked videos isn’t a big deal. Really. It’s _ fine _. 

One time, she dreamed she was in a fish tank, and everyone she knew was outside, staring at her. She wondered what the hell was going on, and why she was underwater, and how was she breathing underwater, anyway? And that’s when she started drowning, choking on stale water, and they just kept looking, and laughing, and taking pictures of her as her lungs filled until all she could see were camera flashes. She woke up feeling so sick that Lexie insisted on taking her temperature and getting her a hot compress. She skipped school and got some of Fezco’s best and waited until the haziness settled over her like a safety blanket. 

She doesn’t think she’s ever been with a guy before McKay who wasn’t _ mostly _ using her for, like, sex, and to cart her around like a hot trophy girlfriend sometimes. Whatever, she knows she’s more than the shit horny teenage boys like to call her, and she’s more than a collection of nudes and sex tapes on some sleazy football player’s phone, but the thing is— she doesn’t really know what that more _ is _ most of the time. Okay, she doesn’t want to sound crazy, but when she’s on her own, sometimes she just fucking _ blanks _. It’s like she forgets who she is for a second, and when she looks in the mirror, it’s like looking at a complete stranger, a scared little girl in a body that’s simultaneously too big and too small for her. 

Well. The videos were shitty, but if she’s being honest, it’s more likely that it all started with her dad. 

And her mom, too, but mostly her dad. She thinks she might’ve started feeling lost when he disappeared and left her clinging to a couple sporadic texts and the painfully optimistic hope that he might choose that day to turn up again. Maybe, _ probably _ , that’s where all these _ issues _ started. She isn’t stupid, okay. She knows her dad isn’t perfect— he’s been pretty fucking shitty, really, but she’d be lying if she said she didn’t still hope sometimes that her dad would come back, all put together and normal, and they could go back to a time when things were simpler. 

Or. Maybe it was the baby. 

God, Cassie feels lost most of the time, but seeing that pregnancy test had made her so scared, scared but _ happy _. Like maybe, for the first time, she was finally going to make something she could call her own. But she was just a kid herself, and McKay had freaked out, and. Okay. It had been a stupid, half-baked idea anyway. 

But as she lies on the too-firm medical bed, staring up at the harsh white lines the fluorescent lights make on the ceiling of the room, she feels her heart break a little. For a half-baked dream of a future she’ll never have. For the barely-there beginnings of a life within her that she made— that _ she made— _ about to get snuffed out.

It feels a little like she’s back in that fish tank, except she’s the one watching from the outside, unable to do anything as the scared little girl behind the glass tries to keep calm in the face of what might be the worst moment of her life. 

Cassie doesn’t always make the right choices. The guilt from some of the things she’s done hangs on her shoulders like a weighted shroud, always in the periphery of her mind. Even now, she’s afraid, afraid that she’s making another irreversible decision she’ll always regret. She wishes she could leave this town and start over. She wishes she could leave her life behind, leave her _ body _ behind. She still doesn’t know when it all got so fucked up, but god, does she want it to _ end _.

So, yeah. It’s hard not to miss the ice. Things made a hell of a lot more sense back then.

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of fell in love with Cassie, which I totally didn't expect, but she's just very _relatable_ (emotionally, at least), and I thought Sydney Sweeney did a super good job portraying her. I hope I did her justice! Also, please tell me if there's any mistakes in this because I'm sick and my brain isn't really working.


End file.
